Saved Stories

Custom Lists

Friends

Stats

Recent Comments

I appreciate the somewhat softened perspective. I'll just say one last thing and then leave forever. It isn't the term it is the depiction. Thousands of people with no native heritage dress weekly in native garb which is used outside of the cultural context in which it was cultivated. They make a mockery of sacred ceremonies by imitating them in support of millionaires on the field. Natives are in a continual battle to erase stereotypes perpetuated over decades in the media and to replace them with accurate depictions they can be proud of. No gain is too small.

You might have to add a few more qualifiers to those progressive credentials after this exchange Mrs. Can you help him understand why it takes a stretch of the imagination to say that colors represent ethnicities while it takes no such stretch to say that the mascot for the team in DC represents an ethnicity? It's clear he's still happy to disrespect natives by joking around with a term they consider offensive.

Didn't want to leave you hanging on that great question olphart, but I'm not sure I can explain why it is better to have (even a little) less discrimination and objectification. Saline, Seminoles and FSU have a mutually beneficial agreement. Without it FSU would be unable to participate in NCAA activities without a name change.

You guys can keep lumping this into those two categories, Liberal and Conservative, under the assumption that each is some managed, cohesive, issue-focusing machine. This is the action of native americans who are offended by the depictions regardless of their political persuasion. If you want to objectively evaluate whether this is a cause that many natives consider to be important you may do so, you are not required to accept my word on it. If you want to keep defending your dumb point, you may continue with your rhetoric which, as you have stated, is simply opinion based on no real passion or background. I think everyone understands your point by now anyway: the passions of the minority are secondary to the passions of the majority.

Dig, dig, dig, Olphart. It's a fight that was picked by native americans, I think they file under "whatever." This victory is meaningful to them. You are thoroughly unqualified to determine or even critique the issues that native americans should consider important even if you claim to be sympathetic to their historic challenges. Sorry if they didn't coordinate with liberals or conservatives or you to learn the single, most important issue on which all of their attention should have been focused. Natives have organized groups and qualified leaders who speak for them. Those groups and leaders are the ones who are organizing against offensive depictions. Surveys are not required to determine or carry out the wishes of the group. If you don't have strong feelings about this why do you cling to your original misguided argument which seems to claim that no one should have strong feelings about it?

You're still not being objective Olphart; I'll try to remove some more "U"s for you. Your opinion is typical of that expressed by a majority unwilling to change an offensive tradition: "what's the big deal? they're just being too sensitive." You miss the point. It's fine for you to prioritize discrimination against natives lower on your list than other discrimination, but you don't get to say it's unimportant in spite of all the natives who are depicted by these teams saying that it IS important. I didn't say you were opposed to marriage equality, I said that your deductions are the same as those who equate it with bestiality and polygamy: if we can't name it after natives, then we can't name them after fish or mammals or weather phenomenon or rocks. Perhaps the natives have crossed the higher-priority cause of marriage equality off their list since the repeal of DOMA settled the issue for them.

It has nothing to do with my personal self-esteem, if it did I would have gone after that Cleveland logo first, my opinion and feelings are congruous with millions of native americans. Either way, I understood outlier to say your line of questions was silly rather than my opinion; he would have to clarify.

If a native group objects to the way their words or names are used based on the feelings of their members, they have a right to do so and the organizations (states in your examples) that use those words have an ethical responsibility to address the objection up to and including replacing/removing the term.

Based on your arguments, I've concluded the following: names and terms that are created prior to being deemed offensive may not be changed; you respect all native americans (except individuals who disagree with you), but the respect does not extend to their wishes about how they are nationally-depicted to and by non-natives.

Olphart, you forgot to insert U into IMO which stands for "uninformed." Your analogies are akin to those presented by the idiots who say marriage equality clears the way for polygamy and bestiality. You really aren't being objective.

Native groups, like every other ethnic group, have the freedom to define which terms that describe them are derogatory or acceptable to them. When a popular consensus is formed that a representation is objectionable, they have a right to pursue remedies. The NWA Naturals are obviously not referring to an ethnic group and not really analogous to the DC team; if they change their branding to feature native symbols maybe they'll move onto the radar of natives who object such things. We have to consider whether a term is derogatory in the vernacular rather than in the context in which it was conceived: the N-word.

You are absolutely incorrect about whether natives are complaining. Take a look at the twitter page for the national congress of american indians if you are uncertain; their background will make it clear. There was also a commercial aired during the NBA finals this year decrying the name. This is an ongoing issue in the native american community. The groups that are complaining are doing so on behalf of the individual natives they represent. The baseball teams in Atlanta and Cleveland should be taking notes.

Wrong again: Arkansas does not refer to a native american tribe. It is a french adaptation of a native american NOUN that means "downstream place;" perhaps a better analogy is Oklahoma which means "people" (okla) and "red" (humma) in Choctaw, the language of my tribe. I know that my tribe is proud to have named their state, but it is not unheard of to change geographical titles when the modern context for the name is changed.

A man who says he's a former University of Arkansas student now living in New England has identified himself as the person wearing an "Arkansas Engineering" T-shirt in the Friday white supremacist march in Fayetteville. He apologized for involving UA in the story and to the professor misidentified as being the person wearing the shirt.